The present invention relates generally to information delivery systems and, particularly, to a novel, World Wide Web/Internet-based, telecommunications network data management reporting and presentation service for customers of telecommunications service entities.
Telecommunications service entities, e.g., MCI, ATandT, Sprint, and the like, presently provide for the presentation and dissemination of customer account and network data management information to their customers predominantly by enabling customers (clients) to directly dial-up, e.g., via a modem, to the entity""s application servers to access their account information, or, alternately, via dedicated communication lines, e.g., ISDN, Txe2x88x921, etc., enabling account information requests to be initiated through their computer terminal running, for example, a Windows(copyright)-based graphical user interface. The requests are processed by the entity""s application servers, which retrieves the requested customer information, e.g., from one or more databases, processes and formats the information for downloading to the client""s computer terminal.
Some types of data, e.g., xe2x80x9cpricedxe2x80x9d call detail data pertaining to a customer""s telecommunications number usage, is made available for customers in an aggregated or processed form and provided to customers, e.g., on a monthly basis. This type of data is analyzed to determine, for example, asset usage and trend information necessary, which is required for network managers to make critical business decisions. As an example, the assignee telecommunications carrier MCI Corporation provides an MCI ServiceView (xe2x80x9cMSVxe2x80x9d) product line for its business customers which includes several client-server based data management applications. One of these applications, referred to as xe2x80x9cPerspective,xe2x80x9d provides call usage and analysis information that focuses on the presentation of and priced call detail data and reports from an MCI Perspective Host Server (xe2x80x9cPHostxe2x80x9d). Another client-server based data management application, referred to as xe2x80x9cTraffic View,xe2x80x9d focuses on the presentation of real time call detail data and network traffic analysis/monitor information as provided from an MCI Traffic view server. Particularly, with respect to MCI""s Perspective system, customers are provided with their monthly priced and discounted raw call detail data, call detail aggregates, and statistical historical summary data. As such, the Perspective architecture is organized primarily as a batch midrange-based server data delivery mechanism with the data being typically delivered on a monthly basis, allowing for xe2x80x9cdelayedxe2x80x9d trending, call pattern analysis, repricing and invoice validation based on the customer""s call detail data. The trending, analysis, and repricing functionality is maintained in workstation-based software provided to customers for installation at customer sites on their PCS.
FIG. 1 illustrates the current architecture 10 for Perspective and Traffic View Systems which presently run on separate environments and are maintained independently of each other. The StarPR server provides a batch reporting mechanism focused primarily on providing billing data to 1-800/8xx, VNET, Vision, and other MCI customers and is used by MCI customers predominantly to do internal charge backs and to analyze billing usage. Alternately, or in addition, the customers use the data provided to them to do call traffic analysis, similar to TVS.
With specific reference to FIG. 1, the data collected is in the form of call detail records which are created by various MCI/Concert switches (not shown) whenever a telephone call is attempted in the MCI network and which includes information about call type, call origination and termination locations, date and time, added intelligent network services, any hop information, product type and other relevant information about the call. The Network Information Concentrator (xe2x80x9cNICxe2x80x9d) component 15 is a network element that collects the CDRs and sends them to appropriate locations via a Global Statistical Engine 17. The Global Statistical Engine 17 collects the CDRs and transforms, processes, and sends them to the TVS 20. The TVS provides access to this data through various statistical reports and real time monitoring engine 22 (xe2x80x9cRTMxe2x80x9d).
The CDRs are also sent to the billing system which applied billing based on call detail values. These xe2x80x9cpricedxe2x80x9d CDRs are known as Billing Detail Records (xe2x80x9cBDRsxe2x80x9d) and are sent to a Perspective Host(xe2x80x9cPhostxe2x80x9d) server 25. The Phost server 25 filters out the BDRs not pertaining to the xe2x80x9cPerspectivexe2x80x9d customers, applies various transformations to the customer""s raw call detail data to generate summary data, and generates and formats the data for the various Perspective customers. This data is then compressed, sent to a document service center (xe2x80x9cDSCxe2x80x9d) and CD-ROM dispatcher (xe2x80x9cCDDxe2x80x9d) 34 entities which respectively, uncompresses the data and burns CD-ROMs comprising the customer""s raw call detail data and summary data, in addition to reference files and possibly application software (if not previously owned) enabling customers to perform analysis and trending of their Perspective data. These CD-ROMs are sent to the customers, usually on a billing cycle or monthly basis, who view their data through a Perspective workstation-based software application residing on that customer""s CPE, e.g., PC or workstation 36.
As shown in FIG. 1, the existing Perspective Host 25 mainframe-based data delivery system interfaces with all Perspective upstream feed systems, including billing systems and order entry, and processes the data, e.g., creates canned aggregates, for delivery to the document service center.
The following upstream feed systems include: 1) order entry information from a customer order entry system 19 (xe2x80x9cCORExe2x80x9d) and which information is used by the Perspective Host to determine what customer data to process and where to send it; 2) VNET and Vision monthly billing data feeds from a commercial billing system (xe2x80x9cNBCSxe2x80x9d) system 23; 3) a Tollfree monthly billing data feed from a T/F database feed 27; and, a Concert Virtual Network Services (xe2x80x9cCVNSxe2x80x9d) product feed from a CVNS database 31. In order for all the CDR and data feed information to be processed by the Phost server 25, various reference files and processing rules are provided including: alphanumeric translation reference files from the NCBS billing system 23 and an NPA/NXX-state-city and country code lookup reference file originating from a calling area data base (xe2x80x9cCADBxe2x80x9d) 35.
While effective for its purpose, the current data management and data storage legacy platform infrastructure only provides customers with their priced call detail data on a monthly basis, usually in the form of a canned report. This is not sufficient for an increasing number of customers who, to remain competitive, are required to have updated daily access to their data to enable them to make their critical business decisions quicker. Moreover, these legacy platforms including reporting data are reaching the architectural limits of scalability in terms of the total customers they can support, total online data they can present, total historical data they can keep and type and number of applications they can support.
Thus, a data warehousing approach that would support the daily processing and storage of customer""s priced call detail data in a form suitable for expedient access and presentation as a report for customers over the World Wide Web/Internet would be highly desirable.
The present invention is a telecommunications data management/system architecture integrated with a novel Web/Internet based reporting system. Referred to as networkMCI Interact (xe2x80x9cnMCI Interactxe2x80x9d), the data management/system architecture implements a data warehouse approach to maintaining data obtained from upstream billing systems, i.e., priced call detail data, and which data may be made readily available for reporting on a daily basis. In this approach, priced call detail data is maintained in data marts, i.e., operational data stores, capable of meeting real-time processing and storage requirements. Particularly, these data marts may be partitioned based on various criteria, e.g., customer id, to enable easier management of data by providing scalability, and enabling more control of over hardware and software resources, in a cost-effective way. Additionally, this data mart approach may implement a back-end server component that receives data access requests from various users in the form of a report request, interactive data analysis request or data mining request. This server routes the query to the appropriate data marts, data warehouse or operational data store and responds to the requestor with the result set.
The nMCI Interact Reporting system and data warehousing infrastructure is a layer functioning to enable customers to request reporting functionality across the Web/Internet. This report request functionality includes routing requests to appropriate data marts, e.g., real-time reporting requests may be satisfied by real-time database. Additionally, the interface provides customers with the ability to schedule and prioritize reports, format report request result sets, and provides for load balancing, report request validation, query generation and execution. Through a common GUI, customers are enabled to access their own billing call detail data.
In accordance with the principles of the invention, there is provided a Web/Internet based reporting system for providing timely delivery of a customer""s priced telecommunications call detail data to a client workstation running a web browser application, the system comprising: a data warehousing infrastructure including: a process for generating a current customer list on a daily basis comprising customers entitled to receive daily telecommunications call detail data; a device for receiving customer""s raw telecommunications call detail data records from one or more telecommunications network switch mechanisms, and extracting certain call detail records for predetermined customers; a harvest device for receiving the extracted call detail data records and replacing a call detail data item therein with a corresponding dimension key found in an associated dimension build table for that call detail item; and, a device for generating an output fact table comprising customer records having the unique key structures for enabling consolidated storage of specific customer call detail data; at least one secure server for managing client sessions over the Internet, the secure server supporting secure communication of customer request messages between the browser application client and the secure server; and, a device for receiving the customer requests from the secure server and generating corresponding database queries implementing the dimension keys for application against the output fact table to obtain a specific call customer""s call detail data, the accessed call detail data being transmitted back to the client web browser via the secure server; whereby expedient and updated web/Internet-based access to the customer""s daily call detail data is assured.
Advantageously, the data warehousing infrastructure for the Web/Internet based reporting system provides incremental, daily updates to data and allows users to report on either daily or monthly data. BDR""s may be processed and loaded into data marts on a daily basis. On a monthly basis this daily data is replaced with records produced in the monthly billing run, after an audit approval. The goal of this replace operation is to replace daily priced records with the actual records used to compute monthly billing. This is necessary because a large percentage of the daily records, priced on a daily basis at tariff, may be repriced based on monthly discounts. Additionally, monthly data may also be updated based on audit anomalies. The monthly replace operation thus ensures the accuracy of the data used by customers.
Furthermore, the data management system permits use of existing hardware while allowing future growth to utilize new equipment at less cost and further, allows for incremental expansion as applications and database capacities grow.